About Michael Petersen

I just love Windows 7 RC… It runs much better than VISTA, and has lots of super nice features. (Get it here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/ ) One of these features is the ability to boot from a VHD, which actually means that I can run Win7 on my laptop, without having to reinstall my existing OS, mess around with partitioning or having to install some boot manager in order to run it a dual boot environment. So what does this mean exactly!! Well for me it means that I can still have my Vista installed PC where I know my Microsoft training [...]

Ever wanted to set a registry key to automate some stuff for your users, only to find out that the key resides in HKEY_CURRENT_USER making it quit difficult to have it work for all users on the pc. You can of cause set this in your login script, but setting registry fixes is not really a job for the login script. During a deployment scenario, where only the administrator is logged in, we can obviously us the run once command from the registry, but that only run once on the computer, and not once pr. USER. We could also manipulate [...]

Ever get annoyed that your users have to run trough the media Player 11 wizard, the first time they launch the program. Well I do, and in general my customers do to.. The fix however is quit simple. All you have to do is set the AcceptedPrivacyStatement key to 1 in the registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER ___________________________________________________________________________________ Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences] "AcceptedPrivacyStatement"=dword:00000001 ____________________________________________________________________________________ The obvious problem of cause, is the fact that the key is under current_user, which means that the user needs to be logged on to windows, when the key is added.. This can be automated by [...]

Because of the issue with different HAL’s (Hardware Abstraction Layer) used by XP, it is necessary to make some changes to both Sysprep, and the Kernel files during deployment.. I thought I'd supply my HAL changing script, as it does not require the reference computer to be to build from a specific XXX, and you do not need to add any files to the image beforehand, as that will done by the script. You will have to either integrate MDT into SCCM, or run the script from a package containing this script and ZTIUtility.vbs from the MDT package. Just [...]

When You upgrade a computer to Windows Vista or Windows 7 Beta, or install Windows Vista Service Pack, and after a restart, the computers CD/DVD drive no longer works as expected, or it says driver is not digitally signed, you will have to remove the affected filter drivers. To do this, follow these steps: Open Registry for editing (Regedit.exe). Locate, and then click the following registry sub key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Caution To make sure that you are in the appropriate registry sub key, make sure that the Default data value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class data value is CDROM. In the [...]

I know there are different ways to add regional settings to you build during OS deployment, and some of them are quiet confusing… I'm not trying to put any of the methods down, but I would like to suggest an easy way of adding simple stuff like: Keyboard settings Time Zones Local Settings And all the other sysprep settings. The way I do this is quit simple, and it works every time.. (almost ;-) As we are going to use a couple of MDT scripts, creating a package with the necessary configuration files is necessary. If you are already [...]

I some times run into problems while installing SW as a part of my Task Sequence.. Now don’t get me wrong, most times the apply software works like a charm, and everything is installed without a glitch. But every now and then, a piece of software comes along that just won’t install as part of the TS. To name a couple of the more resent ones i encountered, there is Cisco VPN that has a tendency to cut the network connection for just a second during installation, making the TS fail, or Lenovo(IBM) Presentation Director, that has to have an [...]

A nice thing about Integrating MDT into Config. mgr is the functionalities the Toolkit package gives you. The obvious thing being the ability to use all the MDT script without having to create individual packages.. Another thing I really like, is the fact that it will set a variable that points to the package, allowing you to do simple routines like Copy files, run your custom scripts and programs, use ImageX and much more. To utilize these features we must first create the Toolkit package with all the necessary files… One way to do this is to create an [...]

Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235157&package_id=285539 System Requirements: All Windows OS Licence: Free Developer: http://www.copyhandler.com/ Info: http://www.copyhandler.com/en/introduction.html Short Description: A handy little tool for handling all your Copy/Move actions.. I use this tool because of the Pause/Resume functions, the ability to continue copy even if a file fails, and because it shows info on progress, speed, time left e.t.c.

Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/ System Requirements: All Windows OS Licence: Free Developer: Sourceforge.net (multiple developers) Info: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm Short Description: Replacement for Notepad, that gives you collar coding, and lots of other useful stuff for editing a variety of script languages. Personally I use for editing XML, VBS and WSF files..

During Automated Build and capture, and sometimes during deployment it's nice to be able to automate changes to the device manager (well devices, but basally the ones you se in the device manager). Her the Microsoft tool DEVCON comes in handy.. Lets say you need to remove some devices before you capture you master image, like unknown devices, com ports, display adapters etc. All you have to do is to make a "run Command Line"step in your TS that runs the DEVCON tool with the right parameters: Remove Device: (In this case the comports) DEVCON remove USB\PNP0501* This action [...]

When using System Centre Configuration Manager for OS deployment you always use WinPE as your boot media/environment for deploying the actual image… Normally you can just use the boot image supplied with SCCM (a WinPE 2.1 wim, taken from WAIK and placed in \\”SiteServer”\SMS_”SiteCode”\osd\boot\”architecture”\boot.wim), with out any further considerations. Well you might have to inject some NIC and Storage drivers, but that's properly it! A problem you might run into though, is lacking functionality of that WinPE build, like no HTA, MDAC/ADO support etc, or you might need to ad a “Custom media hook” to run a script prior to [...]

Playing around with OS deployment (and teaching MS MOC courses) I often use virtual environments such as Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server. Now more often that not I find myself pulling out what little hair I have left, in sheer frustrated over the speed with witch VPC/server runs… I mean trying to run a DC, a SCCM server and a client is near impossible unless you like long walks along the beach and other slow boring things… So I find myself converting stuff to VMware as it seems to run some what faster along with other need features.. [...]

If you want to run a script before the actual TS start, well even before the boot CD looks to SCCM for policies to run, you could add a Custom Media Hook. The Media Hook will run a script defined in an INI file and not enter TS mode before it has finished.. This could be useful in any number of scenarios like cleaning the disk, enabling the disk if it has been encrypted, setting variables, entering data to DB and so on and so on. Now enabling this feature is quit simple, and then again it is not! [...]

Lets say you have a application you only want to install on laptops, like f.ex. VPN or battery SW. Well now how do you get around this?? I use the MDT variable IsLaptop as an option on my Task Sequence step. 1. add the MDT Gather step somewhere after the image has been deployed 2. On the Install Software step you only want to install on Laptops, you add the “Option-Task Sequence Variable” IsLaptop equals TRUE This will make sure this step is only run is the Chassi type is LAPTOP. You can of cause do the [...]

I normally like to capture my reference images from a virtual machine as it eliminates a lot of the driver issues you have if you capture an Actual machine. I did sometimes run into problems capturing XP images though. The build and capture posses would work fine, but once I deployed the image (with Storage driver and HAL replacement scripts and everything ) it would just enter an endless loop ether before the minisetup, or just after. The problem turned out to be the old UberBug problem where WinPE 2.1 formats the HD in a way that XP doesn't [...]

Setting up WDS 1. If WDS is already installed go to step 4 2. Make sure you are running Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later 3. Go to "add or remove programs" and open "add/Remove windows components". Scroll to the bottom of the wizard and check of "windows deployment services" and hit NEXT (Make sure you have the srv2003 source files as you will be prompted for files) 4. to check the status of your WDS open a command prompt and type wdsutil /get-server /show:config 5. If WDS operational mode is Mixed or legacy, you are done. 6. In [...]

Deploying XP with different languages can sometimes be a real challenge. Not that it's that difficult to make the different settings in sysprep.inf or unattend.txt but you still need to make sure the correct files are present during installation, and depending on how you do this, a number of things can go wrong. First let me point out that, this guide assumes that we are working with BDD/MDT or SCCM and therefore do not have the ability to manipulate the behavior of winnt32.exe (the executable used to start the Windows XP installation) by adding different command switches. Normally we [...]

So, I don't know if there are any one out there who still playing around with BDD/MDT and SMS? if not your are the lucky ones... Myself I still have customers who are running that setup... Basically it runs fine, but there is always the issue with updating WinPE with NIC and Storage drivers... Recently (well yesterday actually) I had to update WinPE to work on a "DELL Precision T5400" with a non built in SAS 6 Storage Controller. Normally its not that difficult to add storage controllers to WinPE 1.5, I just import them in trough SMS, and [...]

As you properly know there are some significant differences in the way SCCM/OSD works before SP1 and after SP1. One being the OS target drive during the WinPE phase (D or E instead of C), and also weather or not you have to "press OK to accept that OS deployment is about to start, and your DeployCD should be removed" (I use CD in the form of .wim loaded into WDS for my "Mixed mode" customers). Also the difference between PE 2.0 from WAIK 1.0, that lack some NIC and Storage drivers that the 2.1/1.1 version have. Now where [...]

A while ago, I noticed that the PC name specified during the "Import Computer Name" part of SCCM didn't stick trough out the entire deployment process.. The strange thing was that this wasn't the case for all my task sequences. What I then noticed was that the name (when it changed) always took the WINPE random name like "MININT-XXXXXX", which led me to think that it properly had something to do with the MDT integrated TaskSequences, and what do you know, it did! It then got me thinking, that the MDT scripts properly updated sysprep.inf with the variable "OSDcomputername" [...]

I know there are many ways to handle PC naming during deployment, like prestaging, variables, userexit scripts, etc. But a very simple way is to just have the PC prompt you for a Name during The TaskSequece. I wrote a small script that in conjunction wit the fabulous ZTIUtillity.vbs script from MDT does just that. It is very small and simple script (as I pretty much suck at scripting) so it shouldn't be hard to get it to work. The script will prompt you for a PCname, and write it to sysprep.inf (if needed on VISTA it must be [...]

I recently had a customer who couldn't re image machines because of some hidden partition stuff on manufacture preloaded machines. It actually turned out that a couple of files needed to be removed prior to running the TS. So we added a script to be run prior to the launch of the TS, to get rid of these files. Its not like its a big secret, how you do this, as it is in the WinPE.chm but I thought just make small description of the steps anyhow. 1. MountRW SCCM boot.wim with ImageX - ImageX /MountRW C:\boot.wim 1 C:\mount [...]

I have always loved the DriverPaths1=\\server\path\%model% part of BDD\MDT because it enabled you to have all your model specific drivers in a corresponding folder rather than a repository. SCCM pretty much forces you to use repositories.... I know that you can create different driver packages and categorize your drivers, thereby enabling you to only use specific drivers. However, you then have to create a bunch of IF statements, to make this a reality. The BDD/MDT way is to add the "DriverPaths1=\server\path\%model%" to your CustomSettings.ini, and then create a folder structure looking something like this: Each folder would then [...]